Saturday, January 17, 2009

Washington - In the past decade, working as a US diplomat and then as a human rights advocate, I've had the perversely unique opportunity to meet on occasion with one of the longest-serving dictators in the world, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

These three- or four-hour marathon meetings were right out of central casting, with an out-of-touch octogenarian autocrat spouting vitriol against the British, democracy, and American corporate interests while sipping tea and speaking in an English accent even Queen Elizabeth would envy.

In one of the early meetings, no one in the room at that time took seriously his vague threat that he would rather watch his house burn down then give away the key to the presidential mansion. Mugabe's latest announcement that he is forming a new government without the opposition despite their power-sharing deal clarifies what he meant: that he would never leave power willingly as long as he was alive, and that he would destroy the country if he had to in order to maintain his grip on power.

He's made good on his promise: Half the country faces starvation, the government – which once boasted a literacy rate higher than America's – spends 18 cents per student per year on education, food prices double every 24 hours with the world's highest inflation rate, and a cholera epidemic rages as the once-stellar healthcare system collapses.

The situation is dire but not hopeless, if the international community – including the incoming Obama administration – is willing to move beyond the failed strategy aimed at cobbling together a coalition government with a man whose entire worldview is predicated on maintaining absolute power by any means necessary.

For a real solution in Zimbabwe, there are two credible choices: isolation or intervention. Neither is cost-free, and both are fraught with dangers. But now that the house is burning, we must take away Mugabe's key. ...